The data is here: Australia October Employment Change: +58.6K

Analyst responses are coming in direct and from various sources, and more to come!

CommSec chief economist Craig James:

  • Results were hard to believe
  • James cites improved confidence levels, low interest rates, small business sector stimulus, and strong residential building as factors behind the better results
  • Notes that 315,000 jobs were created over the past 12 months, biggest annual job gain recorded in 7½ years
  • "Clearly the Reserve Bank got the call right by leaving interest rates unchanged earlier this month, identifying an improvement in the economy"
  • "Clearly there won't be another rate cut in 2015" ... possible the last cut has occurred in this cycle

Stephen Walters, JPMorgan chief economist:

  • Across the board, unequivocally, a strong number
  • Jobs are being lost in mining but we're getting other jobs in areas like retailing and transport and tourism
  • Kills off any chance of the RBA cutting interest rates in the near term, but you can't rule it out next year

Capital Economics chief Australia economist Paul Dales:

  • The labour market is currently surpassing even the RBA's expectations
  • This explains the leap in the dollar from US70.65¢ before the data to US71.40¢ after, as the chances of further rate cuts are fading somewhat

Michael Every, Rabobank's Head of Financial Markets Research Asia-Pacific

  • "Apparently an economy growing well below trend, with a post-China slump in mining and no sign of inflationary pressures, saw unemployment plunge 3 ticks to 5.9% and employment leap 58.6K in a single month - the equivalent of 783K jobs added on a US payrolls survey!
  • We've seen outliers like these before recently, and indeed the last example was subsequently revised away by new methodology
  • For the RBA, which has made clear it has an easing bias, the data will obviously push back rate cut expectations, push AUD way higher, and push opinions of the ABS way lower

Justin Smirk, Westpac Senior Economist

  • We are very cautious about taking this month's number at face value
  • The annual pace of employment growth of 2.7%yr look way to strong compared to our indicators of the labour market
  • The original data suggest total employment rose 92.7k when normally it is a significant negative in October
  • It does appear the ABS is still having problems with the original data following changes to the supplementary surveys. As such, we are cautious about reading too much into today's very strong update

Michael Turner, RBC Capital Markets:

  • Hard to believe
  • The pace had been getting better over the last two to three months and I don't want to say that these numbers are completely out of the realm of possibility
  • In trends terms, these numbers are more than what other indicators are suggesting
  • We are still calling for a rate cut in the first quarter of next year
  • From a bigger picture perspective, there are bigger forces at work that will keep pressure on the cash rate over the long term but that is not the story today

UBS :

  • Change forecast, remove RBA rate cut forecast (rather than cutting by 25bp in February)
  • Employment report is undeniably very strong
  • Say there is still risk of another cut in 2016 ... if a delayed Fed hike, more Australian bank out-of-cycle rate hikes, a weakening of the housing market, more low CPI results

ANZ Senior Economist Justin Fabo:

  • While undoubtedly there is some noise in today's data, underlying jobs growth has been strong for a run of months
  • Perhaps the labour market is even better currently than we thought
  • If so, achieving a cash rate cut by February looks less likely at this stage

more to come